The Dead Letter Office at Chesterwood 2007

“Dead letters! Does it not sound like dead men?” – Bartleby, the Scrivener, Melville

{Proposal}

The Dead Letter Office is a sculpture and mailbox where you can send correspondence to loved ones who have moved on to the “next world”. This is in the shape of a Victorian dollhouse, featuring gothic-shaped windows and eaves, clapboard siding, gingerbread trim, cedar shake shingles, a chimney, and two mail slots on either side for standard sized letters. After construction, the structure will be lined in fire retardant material so that the letters may be periodically cremated in order to facilitate their “delivery”. Under the base will be a small compartment with writing materials so that inspired visitors might dash off a note. The house will rest on a waist-high post and bear a sign, reading “The Dead Letter Office.”

{Background}

French was an active sculptor in the Victorian Era and created some of its best monuments, particularly memorials as seen in Forest Hills Cemetery and others. Just as modern cemeteries were established during the Victorian Era, so too came about the concept of privacy in the modern mail service. Inventions to that end included letter envelopes, patented in 1849; the first U.S. self-adhesive stamps in 1847; and street drop boxes in the U.S. by 1858. The Dead Letter Office in the United States was instituted in 1825. Letters that were undeliverable (illegibly addressed) ended their journey in this office where they were periodically burned, and contents of value were auctioned.3 In Canada, the Dead Letter Office had its own stamp, depicting Queen Victoria, to facilitate delivery (see insert below).4,5

I based this model on the tower of a gothic mansion on Cape Cod. Such house designs referenced medieval gothic cathedrals, and included many design indicators pointing to heaven, such as steeply pitched roofs, spires, weathervanes, widow’s walks, and pointed-arch windows.6 There are, however, no doors in this particular building, signifying that the living cannot enter. The only point of entry is through writing. 

Dollhouses pool together cross-cultural references of “houses of the dead” (mortuaries). Small houses for the dead, similar to bird houses or dollhouses to Western eyes, appear in Thailand as “spirit houses”: fancy miniature buildings out in the yard where spirits gather, thereby keeping them out of the main house and out of trouble. There are also famous archeology sites in both ancient Egypt and ancient China where an entire underground house has been buried with its owner to accompany them through the afterlife. Two other cultural practices around death and cremation include those of the Taoists and the Hindus. In the Taoist tradition, family members burn symbolic “ghost money” to send to the deceased. The Hindu tradition embraces cremation of the body as a way to signal the soul’s detachment from the impermanent dwelling of the body.